Membership Marketing Strategies: You Have a Membership Site – Now What?! Get New Members!

You've spent time, effort, and a lot of money creating a brand new membership site.

Now, all you have to do is fill it with members!

The problem is that membership marketing strategies are a dime a dozen… so how do you know which one to pick?

Well, here's a tip: you don't have to decide which one to commit to. Instead, the most effective membership marketing strategies are those that are intertwined and rely on each other's strength to succeed.

First Check: Make Sure Your Membership Message Is Solid

The ideation process itself – making sure your idea can survive in “the real world” – is worth revisiting before you even begin to look at specific membership marketing strategies.

Because if the foundation isn't solid, you'll find that nothing ever really “clicks”.

That's why we place so much emphasis on the big picture of your membership site – from ideation to launch. Following an organic process to formulate and test your idea before you present it to the world might mean the difference between absolute success and failure for your membership site.

You'll know you hit on the right messaging for your membership when you've made a few sales. Even if you have a lot of well meaning friends who say it's brilliant, until you get someone to whip out their credit card… it's still unproven.

You don't need to have a huge launch of your membership site to confirm you're on the right track, if you get enough interest and sign ups from your immediate community.

When your membership idea is solid, it's time to find the perfect balance of membership marketing strategies for your launch…

A Membership Site Launch Is Composed of Many Individual Marketing Strategies

Your job is to fit them all together to make sure they work seamlessly!

You can break this down into bite-sized action steps by following the three distinct phases of a membership site launch:

The Prep Time

The Pre-Launch

The Launch Itself

Phase I: Prep Work!

The “prep” time is devoted to creating your launch materials – landing pages, promotional graphics, emails, etc. All of this creative “grunt work” is done during this time, to ensure nothing has to be created during the launch itself. (Although writing an extra email or social media post during the launch is totally normal!)

Here are the five main areas to prep for your launch:

1. Write Out The Launch Flow

Take some time to create a solid workflow, from the first point of contact through the membership purchase.

This gives you the ability to see the big picture of where your members will come from. It'll also give you a practical outline for all of the other tasks that have to be done.

You can start pretty vague and just hit the main points at first. However, as you continue to think it through, you'll find that you can break down each main section into several smaller parts, each more detailed than the last.

I recommend mind-mapping this launch flow, including: the email marketing funnel, the social media posts to each of your platforms, and the pre-launch content you'll be releasing as a teaser.

2. Create Your Content

You know where you're starting and where you want to end up… now it's time to start crafting your content!

Keep referring back to your flowchart from the previous step to make sure each of the main areas is accounted for, including:

4. Set Up Your Sequences

You might create several different sequences, but the two main ones are:

The Promotional Sequences – these are automated to build awareness and enthusiasm for your new membership site.

The Purchase Sequence – this determines what happens when someone purchases a membership. The initial welcome email(s) are a part of this, along with motivational emails you might want to include to keep students engaged throughout the first few days/weeks.

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to social media is that not everyone will see your posts. So make sure to schedule a bunch of different posts at different times, to make sure that people know you're opening registration for your membership site!

Write A Blog Post For Yourself and Others

Use your own blog to bring in organic traffic and awareness of your new membership site.

It's tempting to write the post as if it were an alternate sales page… but we've found that it's more effective to write the blog post as a free resource that naturally leads into your membership program.

We used this technique when we wrote a blog about Email Sequences That Sell. Our paid program became the natural call-to-action at the end.

This membership marketing strategy is not a “one and done”, because content marketing is something you'll want to do on a regular basis. But if you can craft a killer blog post that ties into your launch content, it can become an evergreen pillar that attracts shares and new visitors month after month.

Include Your Affiliates

Equip them with the graphics and swipe copy they need to present your membership site in its best light to their own followers.

It helps to get the date for your membership site promotion in their calendar early, so they can prepare and make the most of the launch buzz.

Phase III: The Launch Itself

The launch itself begins the moment your order forms start accepting purchases and you start seeing the sales roll in.

Each of the membership marketing strategies you use should be balanced according to the length of the launch.

For example, you need a short enough launch window so that your prospective members feel a sense of urgency (“sign up before our registration closes!”).

However, your launch (and pre-launch) should last long enough to give you time to woo your clients and really impart the benefit of the program to them.

Even though your prep work is done… you'll still be busy!

This can be a really tumultuous time… because even though you've done your prep work, there's still a lot to be done.

Stay present to answer questions and keep an eye on the responses you're getting. Often, you might see the need to tweak the sales page to clarify a point, or maybe you decide to add an email into the sequence to address some concerns.

And, if you're using affiliates, definitely check in with them and make sure to offer them encouragement and motivation.

Of course, no matter how many launches we go through – or how confident we are in our membership marketing strategies – it'll always be a bit of a stressful time. And that's just the nature of the beast.

But you can always improve from your lessons learned from launch to launch.

If the results aren't what you were hoping, take time to revisit that flowchart and find out where you can improve.

Maybe your ads generated a ton of traffic, but the sales page just didn't convert.

Or maybe your ads and email didn't get any clicks.

Maybe you got a lot of purchases, but were then deluged with refund requests (hey, it happens!). If this is the case, you might have a product that actually doesn't fit with the market, or maybe your advertising didn't properly represent the membership program.

In either case, always ask the people who are refunding why they aren't sticking with the program. You might also want to check out this member retention tips.

Keep a list of “what worked” and “what didn't work” to improve on for next time!

The Most Important Membership Marketing Strategies Of All? Doing It!

Launching a new membership site is so exciting. No matter what happens, you'll be filled to the brim with new ideas to try out for next time.

The chance to change the world is literally sitting just beyond your fingertips…